Personalized Bubble Magnets Using Text & Pictures

Hi all! It's been a week since I last posted and I am going to try to get back to posting a couple of times a week. I have been doing plenty of fun projects, just haven't sat myself down to share them yet but I will, for sure! Here I will tell you how to make customized magnets using text or free clip art that you can cut out and glue together!

I still LOVE this fun little project for gifts. It's great as teacher's gifts, gifts to family and friends or for yourself to decorate your refrigerator or metal cabinet in your office or cubical at work! They are so much fun and very easy to make. I first did a tutorial back in December to share how to make them for Christmas gifts and mentioned that I would soon share instructions on making magnets in a little more advanced way. It has been a while so here goes! 

The first tutorial was Fun Bubble Magnets! Please go there for the list of materials you'll need. In that tutorial I made bubble magnets using scrapbook paper. For these magnets above and below I used photo paper. I have tried printing on several different papers and photo paper seems to work the best. With thin paper, the ink will run when you apply glue.

These magnets are from a couple of years ago. That year I thought it would be neat to make gifts for all of my relatives and close friends and personalize them so they would be special to each person. I made a mess of my kitchen table for about a month but it was so much fun and everyone really seemed to like opening them!

The bubble magnets above were for my grandfather who is an Air Force Veteran and so I used a clip art of an American flag and then typed up some words of phrases he says to cut out. You need to use a text formatting program to create the text for your magnets. I used Adobe InDesign. You can use Word or Illustrator or another program that allows you to manipulate text in a text box so you can do cut outs for your magnets.

Below shows the dimensions for small glass stones (on the left) and the larger ones (on the right). In InDesign I created several text boxes (with no outlines on the text boxes) that were .55" X .5167" and 1.25" X 1.2667" like my diagram shows below. The glass marbles are not perfect circles so the "squares" are not exactly square. They are off just a tad. I lined the boxes up on an 8 1/2" X 11" size document by copying and pasting. I made sure each box had a little space in between the next one. Then I played with fonts and colors plus background colors and little sayings or inside jokes and I typed them up and placed them within the text boxes. After I had a full page of text and clip art sized to fit inside the boxes, I made a high res pdf and put it on a key chain flash drive that I took to Kinkos to have printed. I was out of ink at home and it's really cheap to have one sheet printed at Kinkos.

Once I had my sheet with my printouts of the text and pictures, I took the glass marbles and placed them over each item I wanted to cut out. I played with placement and then drew around the marble with a pencil and simply cut them all out and glued them together just as in my other post on Fun Bubble Magnets! 

I used a Pixar Cars child's sticker book to make these magnets below for my children's art display in their playroom! It's another fun way to decorate and make things fun for your children. Just make sure your child is over the stage of putting things in his/her mouth!

I used dollar store tins for the packaging and taped ribbons to the insides of the lids for the gifts. You can fit a total of six of the large bubble magnets in these. As for the smaller bubble magnets, I ordered some tin hinged containers(looked like small Sucrets tins) online to hold them. They hold six of the small magnets. The tin containers are lovely because the magnets cling to the them and they are a good size! Hope this helps! 

Fun Bubble Magnets!

Put a smile on someone's face with handmade bubble magnets! Need I say more?!?! This is one of my all time favorite little projects that makes a BIG impression. It's an excellent gift for friends, family members, teachers, you name it! To me, handmade gifts are special because they have to be thought out and come from the heart and these are just so darn cute and fun to make!

They're a great, inexpensive homemade gift that you can do with your child or by yourself. Anyone can make them and EVERYONE will love them... Guaranteed!

What you'll need

Accent gems by Crafters Square (Dollar Tree or Garden Ridge or any craft store). Clear ones are best so you can see the image through the stone.

You probably don't want the ones that look like they have an "oily rainbow effect" b/c the images will appear a bit distorted.

Clear drying tacky glue
I used Aleene's Premium Quality Clear Gel Tacky Glue, purchased at Michael's - goes on clear, dries clear.

Comfy pair of scissors

Roll of Magnets

I prefer the hard ceramic ones but had to use the softer magnets this time but they work fine too!

Pencil

Paper

Scrap book paper is excellent to use! Magazine graphics and images work well! Anything printed on photo paper. Just make sure the paper you use is card stock, photo paper, or something that isn't super thin, although magazine print is great too!

Zacto knife

I love this project!!! Did I say that already? Whew it has been a whirlwind of a weekend and couple of days packed full of craziness and mishaps. Then there is Christmas! This little magnet project is quite relaxing in all the chaos of the holidays. Clear off the table, put down a vinyl table cloth or paper to work on. I used a child's finger painting pad beacause if you're like me, you will get glue on the table, for sure!

I've played around with this so much that I have it down to a science, although it is NOT rocket science! You can set up and do it while watching tv. That is the beauty of it!

Remember the stones are imperfect, as far as shape and size, and they have some noticable flaws but I think that is what is so cool about them. Combined with an image, no two magnets are the same. Just think! No one else in the world will have the same magnets you are making! Lots of fun!

Step One

Wash your stones/marbles. They come with a chalkie residue on them so dump them in a cup or bowl, add a little dish soap and wash and dry and you're ready!

Step Two

Pick a stone and place it on your paper over the image or design you want. I like symmetry but I also like things to be off center for added perspective, so I play around with what images or parts of images would look nice. Once you have the stone over the area of the paper you want, trace the stone closer to the underside of the stone to get more coverage through the stone.You'll want to trace each stone individually b/c the stones vary in shapes and sizes. I've tried different hole punches and they didn't work because the stones aren't perfect circles. I'm also attempting to trace left handed for the photo and it is hard when you are a righty. Trying to take pictures with my non-dominant hand is harder though!

Step Three

Cut out the circle with scissors and lay the stone over the circle to test to be sure they are about the same size.

 

Step Four

Put a dab(smaller than diameter of a pencil eraser) in the middle of the circle and rub the stone on the paper in a circular motion to spread the glue over the paper.

At this point you may want to use the Zacto knife and cut any excess paper from around the underside of the stone. 

Step Five

Place on the paper and let sit and set. Try not to use too much glue so that the stone doesn't slide all over the place and stick to the paper or surface below.

It's a little like a game because you want to keep checking on the stones and lifting them to move them so they don't stick to the surface below. Once they are dry, do the same and glue the back of the paper to the magnet. You don't want to place them too close together to dry because they will attract each other and move together. See below! You don't want this googly eye thing to happen! "Keep em separated!"

Once the magnets have dried, place them in these cute gift card tins, they'll hold on to the tins. : )

You have a very inexpensive gift that won't look it! Stones at Dollar Tree are $1.00 per pound. I used 3 sheets of scrap book paper to offer contrast between the designs and colors.I got the tins at Michael's for $0.50 each on clearance. The magnets are under $6.00 for one roll of about 60. The roll of magnets supplied me with enough to do plenty of peeps!

OK so Ta-Ta-for now! Sometime soon I'll send out some instructions for a little more advanced way to make and customize the magnets. Enjoy the last few days before Christmas!